Star Jones

Starlet Marie Jones Lugo (born March 24, 1962), better known as Star Jones, is an American lawyer, journalist, television personality, fashion designer, author, and women's and diversity advocate.

Jones earned a J.D. degree from the University of Houston Law Center in 1986, and was admitted to the New York state bar in 1987.

From 1986 to 1991, Jones was a prosecutor with the Kings County District Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, New York.

She was recruited by Court TV in 1991 as a commentator for the William Kennedy Smith rape trial and spent several years as a legal correspondent for NBC's Today and NBC Nightly News.

In 1992, she was elevated to senior assistant district attorney.

In 1994, she was given her own court show, Jones & Jury, which mimicked the arbitration-based reality format of The People's Court, though with a blended talk show like set and style.

Although the show was canceled after only one season, it made Jones the first Black person to serve as a court show judge.

Though not the first female to serve as a court show judge, Jones is the first female to preside over the court show subcategory of arbitration-based reality programming, only Joseph Wapner preceding her.

(As announced on January 10, 2022, Jones was scheduled to make her return to the court show genre in fall 2022, as the sixth judge of the longest running courtroom series, Divorce Court. Jones was to begin presiding in the program's 40th season).

Jones then became chief legal analyst on Inside Edition, where she led the coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder case.

She was the only reporter to interview Simpson during his civil trial, which she covered for American Journal.

She is best known as one of the first co-hosts on the ABC morning talk show The View, which she appeared on for nine seasons from 1997-98 through 2005-06.

In 1997, Jones joined The View as one of its original four co-hosts.

Jones' nine-season tenure on The View was marked by controversy at times.

Jones, who had been diagnosed as morbidly obese, began to undergo dramatic weight loss beginning in 2003.

When she married investment banker Al Reynolds in 2004, Jones talked about her wedding plans on The View for months beforehand, including "plugs" (public mentions) for her suppliers, such as the wedding invitations, clothing, and airlines.

It was later revealed that Jones had pushed product-placement in exchange for receiving those products and services for free.

ABC claimed that her excessive self-promotion alienated viewers.

Despite ABC's claims that market research had shown her public approval rating had decreased, she said she had not caused a ratings drop, and she said that the show's ratings during the 2004–05 season were the highest The View had had in the nine years she was a co-host.

Brian Frons, ABC's president of daytime television, told Entertainment Weekly that Jones should have been fired long ago and that he should have encouraged Walters to fire her the previous year.

ABC said that viewers did not like Jones talking about her weight loss and her wedding preparations.

On April 21, 2006, ABC told Jones that it would not renew her contract for the following season.

Privately, ABC, Barbara Walters, and Bill Geddie then told Jones she could go out on "her own terms".

They collectively decided for Jones to announce her impending departure on June 29, but Jones announced it two days earlier following a commercial break.

Jones said she would remain on the show through July.

Jones did not mention on air that her contract had not been renewed.

In an interview with People, Jones said she had been told in April that her contract would not be renewed.

In a September 2007 essay in Glamour magazine, she revealed that she had undergone gastric bypass surgery in August 2003, resulting in a loss of 160 lb over three years.

Many criticized Jones for her initial dishonesty when she claimed she had lost weight via diet and exercise.

Barbara Walters told Oprah Winfrey in May 2008 that she had kept Jones' gastric bypass surgery a secret because Jones had asked her to, and that saying otherwise on the show had turned the audience off.

Jones said that the decision to leave was not her own, saying, "What you don't know is that my contract was not renewed for the 10th season... I feel like I was fired."

On the next day's program, Walters said that they had instructed Jones to publicly claim she was leaving voluntarily, but Jones decided to tell the truth about her leaving and surprised them with a public announcement of her involuntarily leaving the show.

Walters said she had been "blindsided" by Jones' announcement on air the previous day.

Walters announced that Jones would no longer appear on the show with the exception of previously recorded segments.

A few days later, Jones was interviewed on Larry King Live.

When asked about her on-air statements about her wedding, Jones said that every mention of her wedding had been specifically approved and negotiated by the network and that nothing she said had been in violation of any policy.

She was also one of sixteen contestants of the fourth installment of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, coming in fifth place.

Jones was born in Badin, North Carolina, and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, with her mother, a human services administrator, and her stepfather, a municipal security chief.

Jones graduated from Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

She earned a B.A. degree in Administration of Justice at American University, where she was initiated into the Lambda Zeta chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.